A Father's Kegging Dilemma

I have been brewing since 1993 which equals one hell of a lot of bottle washing, sanitizing and capping. I bought a Tap-A-Draft a few years ago to delay my need to start kegging and it has served its purpose nicely. However I'm getting the urge to finally start that Keezer project and be done with bottles.

My problem is that lately my 7 year old has been helping me bottle. He sets the empty bottles in front of me while i fill them all and then sets the caps in place while I run the capper.

He now lists helping me brew (bottling) as one of his most favorite activities in the world.

I don't want to bottle anymore... but I don't want to break the poor boy's heart.

Anyone else have little brew helpers? How do you keep them involved? There doesn't seem to be much he can help with on brew day and if I go kegging there isn't nearly as much fiddly stuff to do.

I put a rootbeer tap on my jockey box... that kept my kids involved (and very happy).

He's 7. There are TONS of things he can do on brewday.

-Measure grain, salts, hops, etc...
-Set-up and tear down brewery
-Cleaning
-Adding grain
-Stirring mash
-Adding hops

Hell, my 3+ year old has done some of these things with me. His favorite thing is being involved in something you enjoy. I expect he will forget about the bottles otherwise.

Sacrifice. Keep bottling some and keg the rest. Or have him help carry the kettle full of hot wort.

Yeah, I bet just hanging out with you is what he likes, just have his role evolve!

Teach him how to correctly pour a tap beer and have him fetch your brewski's for you....just kidding, I would have to say,,,get your keg, it'll free up some time that you and him can spend doing other activities...throwing frisbees, catching bugs, digging worms to go fishing, reading books, etc.....

you can teach him to bottle off of a keg.. still have to follow a couple steps and still have to cap and such

Start doing 6-6.5 gallon batches if you can. Keg 5 and bottle the rest. You'll be able to let some age in the bottle and let the kid have fun too

I'd go with bottling from the keg. You'd fill as normal, and he'd cap, and then you can bring the bottles around to friends or send them in for competitions, etc.

Sometimes I do that to pass around beer and I often wish I had someone to put the caps on, since I might fill 10-15 bottles from the keg at a time and since I want to cap in time to not lose carbonation, I have to set the no-stinking bottling gun down somewhere sanitary, put the cap on, then lose some beer because I need to flush the wand (and it's been releasing co2 in the line) etc.

Why not keg up some soda and have him help bottle it. Or you could even just carb up some water, put a squirt of flavored syrup into a bottle, fill it and cap it for different flavored sodas.

Its just time for his job to evolve, or like others have said get him some soda. Set him up sanitizing.

Root Beer. My dad never did brewing or anything, but a handful of times we made root beer when I was little, and that was the most fun a kid could have. He can still help in much the same way, and you can teach him some of the more involved steps. Heck, it will probably be more fun for him, since he can actually drink some of it when all is said and done.